That’s what amazes me.
Two
JESSE PEGLER
MY NAME IS JESSE PEGLER. The most important thing about me has always been who my father is. There were things I couldn’t do because of who my father is, and things I had to do for the same reason.
Before he got on TV, you had to drive to the outskirts of your town to see him, unless you were in the jail or the hospital. Then he’d sometimes come right to your cell or your bed on the ward. But most people had to get on a bus or in a car and go out to where our advance men had pitched our tent with the letters the size of fence posts on both sides proclaiming:
BROTHER PEGLER,
EVANGELIST FOR JESUS!
People would be streaming in from all points those Sunday nights, and my brother, Bud, would be warming them up with “The Old Rugged Cross,” “God Sent His Son,” or “Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee.” The Challenge Choir would be backing Bud up, though Bud never needed them for support. Bud never needed help shining: He was a born star.
My mother and I would be in our Sunday best, sitting in the front row, and my father would be out behind the tent pacing and praying in his shirt sleeves until he got the cue from the choir, telling him the tent was filled to overflowing and it was time to put on his jacket and get out there.
The cue was the first chorus of “Farther Along.” I always got excited when I heard it, knowing he’d be out any second. I always got goose bumps, knowing he’d be dynamite, blast them sky-high with his preaching.
He did, too. He does.
My father always liked to say he was just a tent preacher. He still said it sometimes, although his tack was changed like his tent.
You might have seen my father on television. He’s there in living color every Sunday morning, sandwiched between cartoons and politicians being interviewed by the press.
If you have seen him on TV, you probably haven’t forgotten him. How do you forget a minister in blue robes with gold tassels running up a white staircase to a white-and-gold balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean? When he reaches the top, while he catches his breath and holds his hands palms up, eyes squeezed shut, the TV screen explodes in a riot of color and organ chords, as though the picture tube was about to blow, and you see:
Then my old man turns around, blond hair blowing in the wind, blue eyes sparkling behind big black owl glasses, white teeth flashing his big, broad smile, and his voice booms: “JE-SUS wants YOU to win! So do I!”
The Challenge Choir comes in at that point chorusing:
“Run, climb, reach for a star!
You make yourself what you are.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way—
Win one with Jesus today!”
On this particular morning at the end of May, my father began his sermon (he calls them “challenges”) with a quote from a poet called Edgar Guest:
“Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That maybe it couldn’t, but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say no till he’s tried.”
Seal von Hennig and I were watching the service on the TV in my father’s study.
“Do you want a Coke?” I asked her.
“I want my teeth more. You’re never going to have your dad’s smile if you keep on drinking Coke around the clock.”
“Just what I always wanted,” I said, “his smile. I could live without looking like either one of them.”
I was always being compared to my dad or Bud.
Bud was the whole reason Seal was there that morning. It was the closest she could come to being near him.
My sixteenth birthday was a real event. It was the day Bud ran away. It was also the last time my father ever preached a sermon under the tent, and it was the first time he didn’t preach as Brother Pegler. He became Dr. Guy Pegler; the Dr. was an honorary degree from a Bible college.
For a horrible three minutes he dragged me in front of the cameras. He told all of Boob Tube Land I was his youngest son, and then he asked everyone if I wasn’t really a chip off the old block, look how good-looking I was. We stood there, the two of us, sandy-haired and blue-eyed and tanned from the hot summer sun.
The entire live audience applauded. There were probably plenty of viewers at home ready to barf, but we only heard from them by mail, long after the moment had passed, and we didn’t see all the mail that poured in, anyway.
“Yes, Lord, thank you for this boy! I love him! I love him!” my father shouted out with his arms raised up. “I love him.”
No mention of Number One Son, naturally.
That was who my father really loved. And my mother. And Seal.
I guess the thing Seal von Hennig was most known for in Seaville was attending the Seaville High Spring Hop with a snake wrapped around her neck. It was the only time I didn’t wish she was my date instead of Bud’s. My mother said if there was a stray dog or a lost cat within a five-mile radius of Seaville, Seal’d find it somehow and cart it home.
Seal was at the tail end of a thing with Eddie Eden, whose father was a conservationist and ran an animal preserve. He’d lent her this snake named Passion, and all through the Hop it was hanging down her back, the forked tongue flicking away. Bud just grinned. Nothing ever bothered Bud, not even the fact Eddie had lent her Passion.
It was because of Eddie that Seal became the St. Francis of Seaville High, committed to the care and salvation of all animal life. Her real name was Sally von Hennig, but she got the nickname her freshman year
